François Perret requires serenity and neutrality of debates at Sciences Po | EUROtoday

Devastating fever

The fixed decline of dialogue and the serenity of debates in favor of everlasting agitation and a rebellious, even combative, mental posture is harking back to the darkish hours that Europe skilled at the start of the final century and that an observer if attentive to those dangerous transformations had deciphered within the lovely pages of Yesterday's world. Memories of a European.

“Little by little, it became impossible to exchange a reasonable word with anyone,” writes Stefan Zweig. The most peaceable, essentially the most good-natured had been intoxicated by the vapors of blood. Friends I had all the time often known as decided individualists had remodeled in a single day into fanatical patriots. All conversations ended with crude accusations. » Before feverishly concluding that in the end “there was only one thing left to do: withdraw into oneself and keep silent as long as the fever lasts”.

But on this spring of 2024, we won’t be silent, pricey Stefan Zweig! We will now not be silent. Because what’s at stake on this devastating fever which has seized Sciences Po goes nicely past the college itself: it’s the chance for all the youngsters of the Republic, immediately and tomorrow, to the Paris Institute of Political Studies as in all the remainder of greater schooling, to make the virtues of steadiness and dialogue prevail once more and in all circumstances over hatred of others and its anti-pluralist excesses.

“Reverse the slope”

By visiting the college's board of administrators on March 13, the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, known as for “reversing the slope” and now not permitting an “active and dangerous minority to prosper at Sciences Po”. But political incantation can’t be sufficient to ensure a return to irenicism and peace on this noble establishment.